The story has been whispered, cried over and repeated into legend. Willie James Jones. Valedictorian, star athlete, drive-by shooting victim.

Though he died at 18, his name echoes out from Lincoln High School, his alma mater, to Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

The San Diego street where he was killed was renamed in his honor. His family founded a charity in his memory. Local alumni from Cornell, the Ivy League university Jones was supposed to attend, raise money for a scholarship in his name.

Tomorrow night, the first recipient of a Willie James Jones Memorial Scholarship, which since 1999 has benefited eight San Diego-area students bound for Cornell, will return home to salute Jones at a private dinner aimed to raise the $50,000 needed to endow the fund.

Daniel Powell, 27, graduated from Cornell in 2002. He also knew Jones, a scholar and high school wrestling champion who had earned a four-year ride to the university.

Powell's older brother, Jonathan, would bring Jones, a fellow member of an honor society for black males, to the Powell family's Paradise Hills home.

The younger Powell viewed Jones as a “rock star.” After the slaying, Powell, who admits he was starting to show an interest in gang life, went another direction. He set out to become a “carbon copy” of Jones.

By his senior year at La Jolla High School, Powell had earned a high school fellowship through San Diego's Price Charities, attended a Scripps Institute program for teens, joined an honor society and applied to Cornell.

Just like Willie.

“Accomplishment is fruit, but it's not the goal,” said the Brentwood resident, who became a founding partner of an investment firm six years ago. “The goal is to affect somebody like Willie affected me.”

A community's scars

Southeastern San Diego is a collection of more than a dozen communities stretching from Mount Hope and Mountain View east to Jamacha and Skyline.

Nearly 160,000 people live in the neighborhoods south of state Route 94 and west of state Route 15. More than a third of the community's households have incomes of less than $30,000 a year. Gang violence and crime are constant concerns.

Jones was shot as he left a chaperoned graduation party on Ozark Street on June 17, 1994. A police officer, a pregnant woman and an artist were among several others gunned down on the same street.

Yet for many, Jones' killing was different. Smart, athletic and charismatic, he had a smile that Wendell Bass, a school administrator, likened to Denzel Washington's. The community rejoiced when he succeeded. When he died, the sorrow was just as intense.

More than 1,500 people attended Jones' funeral, including top city officials and students from throughout San Diego. Cornell's wrestling coach was there, even though the teen never got to compete with the team.

“It was just like a part of you was really snatched away,” said Richard Miner, 63, a Lincoln High booster. “You just can't find the words to express how the community as a whole felt at the time.”

Five gang members were later convicted in connection with the killing.

Less than two months after the slaying, the city renamed Ozark Street to Willie James Jones Avenue. Yet the three-block stretch, which includes the eastern flank of Lincoln High, has seen much mayhem since.

So has the rest of southeastern San Diego.

“The sad part about it is I wonder why it's still going on,” said Elijah Gentry, who wrestled with Jones at Lincoln High and now helps run a popular barbershop. “How many street names are we going to have to change?”

Three teens have been gunned down in the past three months alone. Monique Palmer, 17, and Michael Taylor, 15, were shot in December in Valencia Park. Hannah Podhorsky, 16, was killed in February in Mountain View.

The violence persists in spite of reminders of Jones that dot the landscape. Miner displays a memorial to the slain teen on the south wall of his sporting goods store. Jones' portrait is included in a group of murals in Market Creek Plaza, off Euclid Avenue.

Another portrait will be hung in the Lincoln High library next week. Across the street, a monument that honors high school seniors from southeastern San Diego bears his name.

Precious Jackson's name was the second to be etched on the wall after Jones'. The Lincoln graduate, 26, joined the school's teaching staff two years ago and gives a lesson about Jones to her students. She persuaded two other teachers to do the same.

“I want the students to understand that the struggles we were fighting back in '94 when Willie was killed are the same struggles that we're fighting now,” she said. “I also want my students to take responsibility for their part of what's happening in the community.”

Bass, 58, points to Jackson as an example of the impression Jones left on people. Bass came to know Jones while serving as an assistant principal at Lincoln.

A year after Jones died, Bass became Lincoln's principal. When Army Pvt. Devon Jones – a 2002 Lincoln graduate who is not related to Willie Jones – was killed in Iraq in 2003, Bass' daughter, Joanna, summed up his loss this way:

“He was our Willie Jones.”

A father's commitment

For Willie Earl Jones, Willie James Jones was neither beacon nor symbol. He was his child.

The father of three surviving children will retire in June following a 37-year teaching career. His office at Valencia Park Elementary School contains photos of his son flipping a wrestling opponent and a T-shirt from a tournament named for the teen.

He travels the state hoping his son's death will persuade educators and students to find a way to prevent gang violence. He made his most recent presentation three weeks ago at a San Jose teachers conference.

Willie Earl Jones, a grandfather of seven, embraces the mission, but he has had to make sacrifices to accomplish it.

“I had to put it in a perspective where I could handle the situation without becoming very, very emotional about it,” he said.

Jones keeps a list of places and events that honor the teen, including Cornell and Price Charities, which named an award for their former fellow.

He will attend a banquet tonight when a San Diego sports foundation hands out the Willie Jones Most Inspirational Player Award. Then there's the Cornell event tomorrow.

Willie Earl Jones wrestled as a college student, and his son once tracked down old photos of his father competing at Mesa College. He was touched by his son's interest. Now the father is maintaining the son's legacy.